


Champagne and Caviar

by facetofcathy



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: sg_rarepairings, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-10
Updated: 2008-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written For:  azure_horizon in the SG Rarepairings ficathon in 2008.<br/>Prompt:  Three Things You Want To See: Carter and John bonding over command,<br/>some past story of them, hotness.<br/>Three Things You Do NOT Want To See: Sam/Jack, Sheppard/Weir and no<br/>character death</p><p>With heartfelt thanks for the beta to kisahawklin, any flaws are due to my poor efforts.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Champagne and Caviar

**Author's Note:**

> Written For: azure_horizon in the SG Rarepairings ficathon in 2008.  
> Prompt: Three Things You Want To See: Carter and John bonding over command,  
> some past story of them, hotness.  
> Three Things You Do NOT Want To See: Sam/Jack, Sheppard/Weir and no  
> character death
> 
> With heartfelt thanks for the beta to kisahawklin, any flaws are due to my poor efforts.

"I have a tux," John said, and leaned against the open door to Carter's office.

Carter turned around and stared at him blankly, telephone receiver still in her hand. "Colonel Sheppard," she said and carefully hung up the phone.  "Don't you live in another galaxy?"

"Just dropped by to see how the old home planet has changed."

"Uh huh."

"Or, you know, it might have been the briefings I was told to show up for."  John tried a smirk, to see how that would go over.

Carter perched on the edge of her desk, crossed her arms and glared at him.  If she tilted her chin up just a fraction - yup, there it was, the standard skeptical physicist pose.  Even Zelenka did it occasionally.  "You have a tux - in Colorado Springs?"

"Yup, Rodney rents out closet space in his apartment.  Anyone who can afford his exorbitant rates keeps some clothes there for unexpected trips Earth-side."

"I know I'm going to regret asking this, but what does he charge?" Carter looked more relaxed and a little less likely to boil over.

"That's currently in dispute.  He claims I'm in arrears, and keeps threatening to send me to collections, but he can't convince Ronon to work for him."

"He wants to use Ronon as a collection agent?"

"Yup," John said.

"I think I'd actually forgotten how insane you two are."

"Hey now, that hurts,"

"So you have a tux, huh?" Carter sounded like she was seriously considering his offer.

"Yeah, sorry I overheard.  Date, um-"

"Bailed, is the word you're looking for.  He didn't think a night of wining and dining with the bright lights of the physics world was all that appealing." 

"Sounds like any old night in the Atlantis mess to me."  John said, and that got him a flash of a smile from Carter.  He had absolutely no idea why he'd made his impulsive offer.  He still thought of her as part of the Atlantis team, he supposed, and you didn't leave your teammates hanging.

"You're serious?"  The skeptical look was back.

"Sure."

"All right then."  She scribbled on a note pad and ripped off the top sheet.  She had put her Colonel face on, and John was getting his orders.  "Here's my address, meet me there at six.  The Apollo's in orbit, they're beaming me - us to the event."

John stood up from his casual lean to take the slip of paper from her hand.  "Where is it anyway?"  He was hoping she'd say Paris or London or someplace he hadn't been to in a while.

"Washington."

John felt his face freeze.  "Um, physics geeks, that doesn't mean industry people too does it?" 

Carter looked at him askance.  "Not sure, and you know, it's never a good idea to actually call scientists geeks to their faces."

"No one on Atlantis ever complains." 

"That's because they all call you a grunt behind your back."

"Not always behind my back." 

"You can behave in public right?"  Carter said, sounding honestly worried.

John clamped down on the annoyance that flashed up at her words.  He did know the difference between the Atlantis mess and a Washington party, after all.  "Yeah, trust me, I know the whole song and dance.  Six o'clock with tux on and party manners in place."  John waved a sort of salute at her as he left. 

***

John was having a few second thoughts by the time he was knocking on Carter's door.  The tux was fine, it wasn't too many years old, and he thought he looked pretty good in it.  He just hadn't socialized on Earth in a long time, and he was a bit worried he wouldn't remember quite how to behave.

Carter opened the door in a slinky, midnight blue cocktail dress with her hair up in some complicated style that defied gravity.  John followed her inside, trying to reconcile this attractive woman in an amazing set of heels with the Colonel he'd come to have so much respect for.  She led him into her living room and waved him to a seat before she picked up a file from a stack on the coffee table and handed it over. 

John looked at the SGC logo on the file folder and asked, "Is this a briefing?"

"Well actually, yes it is." 

"I was joking,"  John said, and flipped open the folder to a photo of a middle-aged man with a pair of heavy framed glasses riding low on his nose.  A short bio on the same page identified him as Dr. Peter Obermann.

"I have an ulterior motive for attending this party," Carter said.

John looked up in surprise.

"What, you think I like these events?"

John actually had thought that.  "I take it this guy is going to be there?" 

"He's someone the SGC is considering as head of a new department at Area 51.  They're combining the research on all the scavenged Ori and Ancient artifacts we have here on Earth into one department.  I want a chance to chat with him, see what he's like outside of the lab, that sort of thing."

John scanned the folder quickly; the guy had a long list of credentials and accomplishments.  "Aren't _you_ the most qualified for that position, Colonel?"

"I already have a job," she said wryly.  "The guy looks great on paper, but the paper never tells the whole story."

John tapped the folder on his knee.  "There's a couple of people in Atlantis that have more qualifications on paper than Zelenka does."

Sam nodded.  "Exactly, that's why I want to get a feel for what kind of person he is."

"So we're kind of undercover then?"

"Well, more like being discreet, but yeah."

"So maybe we should stop calling each other Colonel?"

Carter, no Sam, flushed a little and said, "Might not be a bad idea."  She gathered up the folders and then contacted the Apollo to request a beam-up.

John would always treasure the memory of the look on Colonel Ellis' face when he saw John in his tux and Carter in her evening dress standing together on his bridge.  He'd stared at them in shock, until Carter had mentioned that they were ready to beam back down, and he'd stumbled back to the command chair to relay the order. 

***

They stood just inside the doorway to the ballroom and surveyed the ebb and flow of people filling the room. 

"For this mission to succeed we need to secure a base of operations first," John said.

Sam looked up at him, "Buffet?"

"Absolutely."

They made their way through the crowd, arming themselves with some champagne on the way, and found a good location near a platter of seafood canapés .   John was bemused to realize that the very ordinariness of the food on offer looked extraordinary to him.  He was suddenly hungry for keq nuts, sour Tingan cheese and Ruus wine in clay jars.  Searching for something familiar, he looked up to find Sam watching him, amusement crinkling the corners of her mouth.  John forced his attention back to the real reason they were at a party full of people they didn't know.

"We should find our target," John said.

"We're not actually here to take him out you know."

John laughed, and on a whim, held out his arm in a formal gesture he'd had down by age ten.  Sam slipped her arm into his, and they strolled around the edges of the room looking for their man.

It turned out that middle-aged men in glasses were not in short supply in the crowd they found themselves in.  It also turned out that more than a few people did know Sam, and they stopped and chatted a few times with people she'd met at various conferences over the years. 

They finally found their man holding court near the bar, surrounded by a group of mostly younger women.  John turned his back to the little group and pitched his voice for Sam's ears only.  "Rodney told me there were physics groupies, but I didn't believe him."

"I've seen them before, and I still have a hard time believing it," Sam answered.

They let the flow of people push them into the edge of Dr. Obermann's orbit.  He was gesturing with a half-full tumbler of whiskey and holding forth to the only two men in the group.  "See now, Phillips, what you and Gonsalves here need to understand is that when it comes to the lab, feudalism is alive and well.  You can't buck the natural order of things, and the natural order says that you work tirelessly seven days a week, while I curse the traffic on the expressway from inside my Lexus and then sleep in on Saturday." 

Phillips and Gonsalves laughed in unison while one of the women asked Obermann what colour his car was. 

"What you boys should do," Obermann said, ignoring the woman, "is get yourselves a good financial planner now.  It's never too early to start planning for the future.  Oh, and while you're thinking about that, you can get me another drink."

Sam tugged on John arm and they drifted out of earshot.  "Can you see him giving all this up and moving to Nevada?"

John had done some flight training at Nelles.  He'd logged every hour he could in the air and had loved the endless blue sky and the clean, empty expanse of the desert beneath him.  He'd begged off the usual trip to Vegas that capped off the training week and had taken a car out for a closer look at the landscape he'd fallen in love with.  The desert was harsh and beautiful and gave a man like John enough air to breathe.   Even when Afghanistan had become hell on Earth, he'd still loved the landscape.  "He wouldn't last a week," John said, and steered Sam back to their base of operations.

"Someone would engineer a lab accident and turn him into a toad," she said once they'd laid claim to their strategic location next to the caviar. "Or a bug," she added with a sly smile.

"Hey!"

"Sorry," Sam said and smirked at him, spoiling the apology.  "The truth is, there really are only two genuinely qualified people for the post, and one of them seems to like his job in Atlantis."

John tried not to show his alarm at the idea that anyone might try to lure Rodney away.  "You don't want it?"

"I'm, hmm." Sam sighed and crunched through a crab puff.  "I'm conflicted.  Gearing up with SG1 again, after being in command in Atlantis was..."  John frowned, the removal of Sam from Atlantis was technically not a demotion, but it sure looked like one to anyone who was well, looking.  He was expecting her to say that it had been difficult, or awkward.  What she said was, "It was refreshing."

"Huh." 

"It was just really nice to let Cam be the guy in charge again.  Do you know I never once set foot in a lab in Atlantis?  Other than to yell at McKay that is."  Sam grabbed a fresh glass of champagne from a passing server.

"Didn't sign up to fly a desk?"

"No, I didn't."  She took a sip.  "What if they change their minds again and offer you the command?"

"If they put me in charge, they can't stop me from flying the jumpers," John said cheekily. "At least that's what I keep telling myself."

"How is Woolsey doing?"  Sam asked.

"Surprisingly."

"Surprisingly good or surprisingly bad?"

"Some of both, more of the first."  John snatched his own glass off a passing tray.  "He honestly cares about Atlantis and what we're doing, so that's something."  John looked up  at Sam for a long moment.  He thought she might like Nevada.  "Well, since the mission was a bit of a bust,  maybe we should hit the dance floor?"

"Absolutely, lead on."

"Sure, I think I remember how."

Sam laughed and said, "We can always do the traditional harvest dance from M5X-759."

John tried not to blush at the memory.  "I think we're both really overdressed for that."  He led her onto the dance floor and was happy to discover he did still remember how to dance.  "You know, you're a pretty good dancer for a geek," he said after a while. 

Sam really could do amazing things with those heels, and John discovered he could still dance pretty well himself, even with a broken toe.


End file.
